Cap on length of time

Out of curiosity what is the cap on length of time for a game?

I know most won't go beyond 200hours (even that is rare) But I am looking specifically at MMO titles, for example I have been thinking of getting back into EQ2. I logged in and grabbed my total time I have played so far and was going to put it on here, I have 12130 hours and 53 minutes played in the game but can't add that, curious what the cap is currently.

12130 hours!!! as in 505 days! Holy s**t!!! Hats down to you sir! Indeed you are a true gamer!

ya, it was a lot of fun, at the same time that's a ton of time to one game that I spent playing.

What developers tend to do if they're actively coding the MMO on a regular basis, they will ajust the time data as people reach the milestone. I remember playing a MUD and when the first players were about to reach the 10k hour mark, coding was modified to address just that.

I, for my part, have never bothered trying to reach the cap in a time limit. I find the concept developed with CoD games interesting when they started posting your online time in days, hours and minutes. I don't know if that idea was taken from another MMO game or not, but I thought it was pretty nifty.

ya in EQ2 it is listed out in days. Was in EQ1, I'd have to log back in on there too to see how much time I Had in there.

I am assuming the time limit on here is 9999 hours.

Originally Posted by: Bowser

I remember playing a MUD and when the first players were about to reach the 10k hour mark, coding was modified to address just that.

I used to run a MUD, and we tended to plan for stuff like that in advance so we wouldn't have to change things. Less work that way.

Nalgas was created on Thu Oct 23 22:19:38 1997.
Played 72430 hours since creation

It did start running earlier than that in the mid-90s, but we lost all the player files switching servers on around that date. Of course, a bunch of that time was idling, but yeah...

I know you said you idle, but do you leave your game idle 24/7? 72430 hours is over 8 solid years. From 1997, that would mean over half of the time was on EQ. I've always been curious why people like to AFK in-game for days at a time. I had someone in my friends list that was on Diablo 2 literally at all times. Maybe it is because I'm a little OCD and need to exit to desktop. Or if you use your computer for absolutely nothing but that game, I suppose there is no reason to exit.

Yeah, at 72430 hours you had to leave the game on for months straight. Were people taking turns playing the game? And if so, just how many?

That was the MUD, not EQ. With a MUD, all you really need is a telnet connection. It takes close to zero CPU and RAM to leave it running. At some times it was almost like an IM client with a text-based MMO built in. You can tab over to the window, check your messages, chat with people while doing a few quests or PVP stuff, and it stays in the background when you switch back to another window to get real work done or play a different game. It would run happily on a toaster because literally everything is done server-side...and I'm talking a toaster from the 90s, not your fancy space-age toasters of today.

Originally Posted by: acidzero

I know most won't go beyond 200hours (even that is rare)

I don't know I have easily put in one play through on many games over 200 plus hours

Diablo 2 with Expansion - I know I have put about 350 hours in and I have not even begun Hell Mode with my Necromancer.
Skyrim - My quickest play through for main+ was about 167 Hours, I am sure if I went to level every Attribute to 100 I would be well over 300 Hours.
Oblivion - My Quickest play through for Main+ was about 150 hours, don't have my saves in front of me, but my first play through was 227 Hours
Animal Crossing - I still have not completed everything and spent about 2 hours a day for two years playing about 730 hours a year, now over 1460 hours, admittedly I have taken brakes as long as a month so I doubt I will ever add a time, I am certainly over 1,000 Hours in, but I also spent plenty of days where I played 9+ hours. It is hard to truly estimate.
Gran Turismo 4 - I still have a few of the long 24+ hour endurance races to go, but I know I have put well over 500 hours into it.
Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 2 - This was easy math I have played and beaten it with all characters, on all difficulties and maxed all stats and levels. At 8 hours per character at my fastest, and 3 runs through per character, and 7 characters, that 21 times through about 168 hours, yet I know my actual time is in the ballpark of 228 hours, since the easy run through and extreme run throughs averaged about 10 to 12 hours.
MVP Baseball 2004 - I never add times to sports, but I am tempted to on this if I was 100% accurate. I played one season all the way through 162 games plus playoffs at about 1 hour per game, I think there was 16 playoff games makes it 178 games or 178 hours, adding in menu screen time, extra inning games it also is over 200+ hours.
Roller Coaster Tycoon - Each scenario was taking about 2 hours, I suppose I could have sped it up but I liked playing on slowest speed setting to really manage the park, Given the expansions, add-ons, etc. I easily played this over 200+ hours, but again I didn't keep accurate play times for it.

These are the ones I know off hand are over 200+ hours of game play that I have played.

Wow I couldn't imagine playing any game for over 10,000 hours. I am sure in all my years of playing games, the total amount played on all games combined might reach close to 15,000 hours maybe more, just estimating.

Originally Posted by: ArchaicGamer

Wow I couldn't imagine playing any game for over 10,000 hours. I am sure in all my years of playing games, the total amount played on all games combined might reach close to 15,000 hours maybe more, just estimating.

Judging by the games you listed above, it is probably way more than that. We underestimate how much time we spend doing things. I joined xfire at the very end of 2005. It tracks only PC games and didn't track a lot of my games (like Skyrim isn't on their at all), but even being only PC games and only about half of the games I've played tracked (and a lot of times they added tracking by the time I was already done with a game) and only since basically 2006 it has a total of 6137 hours. Only 6 of my tracked games are over 200 hours.

If you spend 2 minutes a day putting on your shoes and do it every day, by the time you are 30 (if we subtract 5 years to assume you didn't put on shoes when you were 0-4), you spent over 18,000 hours putting on your shoes. Any little task, if you do it often enough, really adds up, even if it is for a few minutes a day. Gaming tends to be hours at a time, so it should be way longer, even if you don't do it every day (and especially if you DO almost every day).

Originally Posted by: pongsifu

If you spend 2 minutes a day putting on your shoes and do it every day, by the time you are 30 (if we subtract 5 years to assume you didn't put on shoes when you were 0-4), you spent over 18,000 hours putting on your shoes. Any little task, if you do it often enough, really adds up, even if it is for a few minutes a day.

I figure since 1985 I've played on average 7 hours a day. It was around 1 to 3 hours during school days, and 9 hours on weekends and everyday in the summer, and once I graduated in 1997 I pretty much have put about 8 hours to 12 hours a day into gaming. About 27 years of gaming now, or about 9,855 days which works out to 68,985 hours if I have my math right. I don't consider it a waste of time, I'll never be famous for gaming, but it is quite a bit of satisfaction personally.

Originally Posted by: ArchaicGamer

Originally Posted by: pongsifu

If you spend 2 minutes a day putting on your shoes and do it every day, by the time you are 30 (if we subtract 5 years to assume you didn't put on shoes when you were 0-4), you spent over 18,000 hours putting on your shoes. Any little task, if you do it often enough, really adds up, even if it is for a few minutes a day.

I figure since 1985 I've played on average 7 hours a day. It was around 1 to 3 hours during school days, and 9 hours on weekends and everyday in the summer, and once I graduated in 1997 I pretty much have put about 8 hours to 12 hours a day into gaming. About 27 years of gaming now, or about 9,855 days which works out to 68,985 hours if I have my math right. I don't consider it a waste of time, I'll never be famous for gaming, but it is quite a bit of satisfaction personally.

I feel exactly the same. I never feel like gaming is a waste of time. I would have wasted that time anyway :P I started playing games when I was 3 and I probably will keep playing when I am 80+ even though I will probably never earn money from it. You gotta do what you have a passion for

Wow. Some of you have clocked serious gaming time. Even back when I was in high school, I would not play more than 2 hours in a day.

Now, I'll game in bursts. As much as 5 hours in a day, but I'd say I average no more than an hour per day.